Network, Get Answers, Find Members in Your Area, and More!

whats the average income of a subway restaurant owner?

There was a survey of several hundred owners performed by a Subway owners association that showed the average store profit is in the $28,000 per year range. Any loans taken to purchase the store (ave. store cost to build is in the $200K range) needs to be subtracted from this number. I own 6 stores and these numbers seems to bear out. There is tremendous freedom and variation among areas with some local "development agents" being helpful, and some are downright terrible. These regional agents are under contract with Subway and they purchase the territory to develop. Subway pushes them hard for increased store density, causing the average revenue in many areas to fall. Subway and the agents work on a straight percentage of revenue, not profit, so they would rather get more money from 2 side by side stores performing poorly than from one doing well store.

Anyone here recently started a subway restaurant can give me some input on how well it`s going and how much net profit/month. and how satisfied are you being a new owner of subway. please send me a tell or post here. Thanks.

EXCEPTIONAL post here - an important tip to anyone starting a business dependent on traffic ("butts in the door")! Thank you for breaking it down into simple terms.

everyone of the questions here has to do with what one can make? or how much does X franchise make?

if you get in this biz you will here: your food cost should be x%, labor x%, have to pay x% in royalty/marketing and so on. while these percentages are important, and they REALLY ARE IMPORTANT, they are not the key. i have friend that has a pizza franchise and he is always complaining about his food cost. my response is always, "do you want 30% food cost or net $1mil a year?" and the yahoo always responds i need that 30% food cost.

its not about % its about $. and the questions in the post are about $, but believe it or not you have to use % to get there.

Let's use the $5 sub mentioned a while back. Ok $5 a sub. Here is what you need to consider. 30% for food, 13% for rent, 5% for utilities/insurance, 2% misc expense, 16% employees, 10% taxes (maybe a little much)...that leaves 24%. so of that $5 sub you have $1.20. This is the high number, cut it in half for the low number ($.60)

now what do you want to make a year. lets take a stab at $50k. Thats not much, but in this economy some people would kill for it. so with a little math that is roughly 83,334 total sales or 229 per day...

can you get 229 people in a day. say you are open 10to10, how about 19 an hour.

this is how you need to think about the biz. its not the gross number, or the net number. it is taking your average ticket and putting butts through the door.

but i think like an indie, and if you are looking at a franchise you have to add in the royalty and marketing.

Unless you're offering your services and advice for free, I consider your repeated posts the most flagrant abuse of this forum in the 14 pages in this thread right now.

You're doing nothing more but trolling the site and tossing your line out, steering folks to your own website to drive traffic, and one can only assume, revenue related to subscription fees or advertisement traffic-related income.

If you're here to provide advice out of the kindness of your heart, provide it and let everyone benefit from it. If you're going to reply to almost every post with a teaser, you're wasting space and you're wasting most peoples' time. We acknowledge your experience and expertise, but we'd rather not hear from you repeatedly unless you're willing to share it HERE. Otherwise, you have plenty of self-promotions posted already. We know to visit your site if we want to talk.

Thank you,

"50+% of the readers of this forum thread"

Alex, EDwin, Shingic

You have all read my posts, and every time I say call me to discuss as each set of circumstances is different and a verbal explanation/interaction will be more beneficial to you; one question leads to another, so it is easier by phone........

Once I know the real question and the groundwork has been properly laid, I can proceed to answer each person.

Shingic states an investment of $90,000, 30-40% margins, and India vs USA, and more. That is a lot of clutter and confusion and erroneous information so it needs to be cleaned up and set straight.

I have been following this whole thread and would like to add an insight from a different point of view. I eat at subway. I admit it. But like most people that do we realize the food is mediocre. The meats and cheese have little flavor. Once we try other sub shops like Togo,s or quizno,s and find the specials there are no more than subway we feel cheated. The bread at subway is fine. The service is good and most stores are clean and well located. The franchises seem to be well run and prices for the most part reasonable. Why is the taste just not there? If subway could only ramp its quality of meats and cheeses to those of higher end sub shops they would really have something. I don,t mean for this post to bash subway but I think its important for potential owners to know that the subway sandwich really is inferior as far as taste goes. I took an early retirement offer 9 years ago from ATT and at the time was looking to invest some retirement cash. I investigated subway to the point that the only reason I couldn,t pull the trigger was I wasn,t sold on the product. I held on until this last year when I invested in rental properties. It goes to prove that there is something for everyone out there.- j

just checked with a very smart friend of mine whose sister is a major subway franchisee in the southeast.

here`s what he said:

average cost to open a store is $150k - $180k depending on the geography and the ROI is 3-5 yrs, but having one store is like buying yourself a job...you need 4+ good stores to have a nice income and spread the people and risk around.

to help people understand what you are referencing in helpful comments you post in this thread, may i recommend that you use the "Quote button in the upper righthand corner of any previous comment. that way, people will understand the context of your comments.

thanks for contributing valuable content to the forums - and remember, whenever possible, include the valuable content here so people don`t have to go clicking all over the internet. this also applies to self-promotion driving people to your site in many of your posts (which have now been edited to fit within the rules of our forums.) please feel free to use the signature (which you can set up in your profile) to provide a consitent link to your site. you can also visit this thread to learn about linking your signature: http://www.startupnation.com/forums/388/1/1

This is purely anecdotal information but might be helpful. The few times I`ve gone to a local Quizno`s store during the day I`ve found the wait is excessive. I`m not referring to the wait in line, I`m referring to the wait for a sandwich to be made. It almost seemed as though the sandwhich makers were taking their time. This comment has been repeated by my co-workers who rarely go there anymore. For those of us with 30 minutes to an hour for lunch......any kind of wait can mean the difference between being a frequent patron and a customer who goes elsewhere for quicker service. Don`t get me wrong......I love Quizno`s food and stop there on weekends. However, for office hour lunches.............nope.............I go somewhere else.

I am looking at starting a new venture and I have been through this entire post. I am from India and am planning to own a Subway franchise.I have my own location which according to me is a traditional location as of now, but has a lot of scope. Initial expenditure including franchise fee is 90000 $ and the rest of maths u know. Before reading this post i had in mind a good profit margins of around 30-40 % but now i am sceptical of opening a Subway with so much expenditure , though the location is self owned but can fetch me a decent return later. What do think?? I should go ahead and open a subway franchisee, keeping in mind the manpower is cheaper in India compared to US and I mite not have to work as many hours as you have mentioned. Also being orthodox I am assuming a weekly sale of 1700 $ initially to start with.

I want to start my subway franchise at the end of 2011 in NYC. I have a comfortable corporate job but always wanted to start my own business. subway seems like an ideal fit for my needs. i am 34 with mba so if i don't make money i can easily go back to corp america. my concerns are that subway stores are all over the place and not sure how my store can separate itself from the rest. does anyone know how much startup costs would be for a store in manhattan? will this store cost over $1mn since it is in manahttan. i am planning on dedicating a lot of time (70, 80, 90... hrs a week) to make this work.

Hello, I am a new franchisee and I need help. I have two partners and we formed an LLC. I am only being allowed to sign the sublease as an individual but I want to operate the store using the LLC. How can I operate the store using the LLC and protect my self behind the shield of the LLC when the sublease and the Franchise are on my name? I also need to operate as an LLC because I have other partners. Can anyone help me with the experiences they have in LLC`s or at least point me in the right direction?

I`m also interested in buying a subway for my parents. We currently have a conveniant store and could sell it to put up the money for a subway. We are looking to buy an existing one over starting a new one. What is the average selling price of a franchise? Particularly in Northern New Jersey or the Lehigh Valley/Allentown area of PA?
My uncle recently installed a subway in his gas station and says it has been very good-net profit of about 10K a month.

Take a look at Starbucks... There`s one on every corner. I don`t own one, but they all seem to be making money...

You don`t own one because they are not a franchise operation. Well, technically there are franchisees in places where Starbucks is unable to lease space, like inside a grocery store; but all the stores on all the corners you`re talking about are owned and operated by Starbucks.

You mentioned 10 hours per week in your stores. Was that 10 hours per store or 10 hours total. I had read that Subway requires all owners to be operators. I was just wondering what the minimum time is per location. My brother-in-law knows a guy who just bought a franchise from a guy that owns 5. This location earns about 15K a month profit. When asked why he was selling this location he said it was the most removed location of the 5. We were speculating that he might not have been able to meet the minimum time required to be at each location to satisify this Franchise agreement. Would this be an accurate assumption?

Does anyone have any kind of information on the impact Wal-mart has had (now hosting in-store Subways) on existing franchisees. I live in a fairly rural small town (pop. 8,500) that supports 2 franchises and 1 Wal-Mart internal Subway...with all 3 locations within 1.5 miles of each other.